The Polish subjects under Austrian jurisdiction (after 1867 the Habsburg Empire is commonly known as Austria-Hungary) confront a generally more lenient regime.

Poles suffer no religious persecution in predominantly Catholic Austria, and Vienna counts on the Polish nobility as an ally in the complex political calculus of its multinational realm.

In return for loyalty, Austrian Poland, or Galicia, receives considerable administrative and cultural autonomy.

The January Insurrection by Congress Poland persists stubbornly for fifteen months.

Russia, after finally crushing the insurgency in August 1864, abolishes the Congress Kingdom of Poland altogether and revokes the separate status of the Polish lands, incorporating them directly as the Western Region of the Russian Empire.

The region is placed under the dictatorial rule of Mikhail Muravyov, who becomes known as the Hangman of Wilno.

All Polish citizens are assimilated into the empire.

When Russia officially emancipates the Polish serfs in early 1864, it removes a major rallying point from the agenda of potential Polish revolutionaries.

Increasing oppression of Poles at Russian hands after failed national uprisings finally persuades Polish leaders that insurrection is premature at best and perhaps fundamentally misguided and counterproductive.

During the decades that follow the January Insurrection, Poles will largely forsake the goal of immediate independence and turn instead to fortifying the nation through the subtler means of education, economic development, and modernization.

This approach takes the name Organic Work for its philosophy of strengthening Polish society at the grass roots.

For some, the adoption of Organic Work means permanent resignation to foreign rule, but many advocates recommend it as a strategy to combat repression while awaiting an eventual opportunity to achieve self-government.

The quotidian methods of Organic Work, not nearly as colorful as Poland's rebellions nor as loftily enshrined in national memory, prove well suited to the political conditions of the later nineteenth
century.

The international balance of forces does not favor the recovery of statehood when both Russia and Germany appear bent on the eventual eradication of Polish national identity.

The German Empire, established in 1871 as an expanded version of the Prussian state, aims at the assimilation of its eastern provinces inhabited by Poles.

At the same time, St. Petersburg attempts to Russify the former Congress Kingdom, joining Berlin in levying restrictions against use of the Polish language and cultural expression.

Poles under Russian and German rule also endure official campaigns against the Roman Catholic Church: the Cultural Struggle (Kulturkampf) of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to bring the
Roman Catholic Church under state control and the Russian campaign to extend Orthodoxy throughout the empire.

The coat of arms of the Congress Kingdom of Poland had been abandoned, the Polish language had been banned from office and education and the process of incorporation of the Polish gubernias and Russification of its administration had been completed after the failure of the January Uprising in 1863.

The 1867 reform is designed to tie the Congress Kingdom (now de facto the Vistulan Country) more tightly to the administration structure of the Russian Empire, its government reorganized into a combined civil and military administration headed by a Russian governor general and completely staffed by Russian bureaucrats.

It divides larger governorates into smaller ones.

A new lower level entity, gmina, is introduced.

The existing five governorates are restructured into ten, with five on the right bank of Vistula Land and five on the left.

A few exceptions are made to the increasing restriction of Jews to settlement only in the pale—which, by the 1860s, includes all of Russian Poland, Lithuania, Byelorussia (now Belarus), most of Ukraine, the Crimean Peninsula, and Bessarabia.

Some merchants and artisans, those with higher educations, and those who have completed their military service, can settle anywhere but in Finland.

The Polish question largely disappears from the European agenda after 1870.

Blaming romantic idealism for the catastrophic uprising, people reject political activities and extol the value of ”organic work”, progress, and modernization.

Warsaw Positivism, deriving its name and inspiration from the thought of Auguste Comte, provides the rationale for these views.

Poland’s emancipated peasantry, coming into direct contact with the Russian officialdom and antagonized by anti-Catholic and Russification policies, has become more self-consciously Polish.

The dispossessed gentry has moved to towns, transmitting their values to a growing intelligentsia, which has assumed national leadership.

As the Industrial Revolution penetrates Congress Poland, the growth of a bourgeoisie and of an industrial proletariat is accelerated.

The fastest and greatest development is in textiles and is centered on Lódz, “the Polish Manchester”.

Mining, metallurgy, and food-processing industries follow suit.

Vistula Land becomes the most developed part of the Russian Empire, but its development is uneven and its modernization partial.

Moreover, its reliance on the eastern markets make the country dependent on Russia.

Socioeconomic progress contrasted with political stagnation.

Galicia gains a reputation as an oasis of toleration amidst the oppression of German and Russian
Poland.

The Galician provincial Sejm acts as a semiautonomous parliamentary body, and Poles represent the region in the empire government in Vienna.

In the late 1800s, the universities of L'vov (Lwow in Polish) and Krakow become the centers of Polish intellectual activity, and ...

...Krakow becomes the center of Polish art and thought.

Even after the restoration of independence, many residents of southern Poland will retain a touch of nostalgia for the days of the Habsburg Empire.

Profound social and economic forces operate on the Polish lands throughout the later nineteenth century, giving them a more modern aspect and altering traditional patterns of life.

Especially in Russian Poland and the Silesian regions under German control, mining and manufacturing commence on a large scale.

This development speeds the process of urbanization, and the emergence of capitalism begins to reduce the relative importance of the landed aristocracy in Polish society.

A considerable segment of the peasantry abandons the overburdened land.

Millions of Poles emigrate to North America and other destinations, and millions more migrate to cities to form the new industrial labor force.

These shifts stimulate fresh social tensions.

Urban workers bears the full range of hardships associated with early capitalism, and the intensely
nationalistic atmosphere of the day breeds frictions between Poles and the other peoples remaining from the old heterogeneous Commonwealth of Two Nations.

The movement of the former noble class into cities creates a new urban professional class.

Mirroring a trend visible throughout Central Europe, antisemitic sentiment mounts visibly, fed by Poles competing for the urban livelihoods long regarded as Jewish specialties.